A paywall around the shooter’s details is a lot freer than a news blackout. As mentioned you already pay for all your news, one way or another (at the very least by putting up with ads). And, more importantly, nor is it apparently your definition of “freedom” that the press already voluntarily suppresses certain info in order to protect others, like minors in criminal cases, or victims of sexual assault.
(Re?) read the OP. The info is treated as intellectual property, much the way say a biological or mathematical research paper enjoys that protection. You post, Google/Facebook/Twitter takes it down, just as they would someone posting a bootlegged video. (Fair use though would apply.) Facebook, Google, etc. are already under fire for hosting fake news articles or allowing hate groups to search for likely targets through their ad services. The tech media corps are certainly capable of upholding copyright protection, say by algorithmically scanning text strings (vs. the difficulties with video).
If anyone doubts the value of keeping details on these individuals out of the news, see the (rather replete) article refs just upthread.
It bears asking, if the public’s lurid interest, or the press’s monetary incentive to publish news about a person or event runs overwhelmingly contrary to the public health, the common good, and so on, ARE there any mechanisms, executive, legislative, judicial, or otherwise to curb or stop it? Or is this just up to the press’s conscience?
There should be no executive, legislative, or judicial curbs on freedom of the press, as those violate the First Amendment to the Constitution. Obviously, your mileage will vary if you live outside the U.S.
I’m sorry, but I share the opinion of others that your idea is unworkable, silly, and bizarre.
That’s edging into logical fallacy territory, regretably repeated upthread, something like “the value of the act is diminished, because I can’t think of a way to implement it”. Of course it can be implemented. As you yourself posted upthread, the press could go along with it for one, or external requirements could be imposed on the reporting (as they already are in other areas). But what gets disingenuous here from the objectors, is the notion the press bears sole responsibility. Other agencies have a say too. And YOU DO TOO–the public has power as well, for instance by not clicking on this stuff to begin with. (So Mace’s statment becomes “Though it could work if enough people went along with it, I don’t want to, so it won’t work.” (!)) For the clickers, the following questions:
What purpose, exactly, does publishing information on these individuals serve?
A news org can’t publish content incentivizing people to violence. Does not the shooter’s legacy impulse, fueled by the press, incentivize the next mass shooter to violence? (If no, then cite please.)
And I’m not buying chochrane’s brush-off of the question at the end of post #21. There already are curbs on press freedoms. So that question still stands.
Wouldn’t you want it to be much stricter than that? You can go on any of these websites and find copyright-violating videos that have been up for years.
It’s in the public interest that the names, lives, and motives of the perpetrators of these crimes be known to them, so that we can better be informed about how to fix the problem.
Censoring the free press is not a good solution to this or any other problem.
Thank you for answering that one. Yes, this (aside from purely morbid or can’t-not-look-at-a-train-wreck curiosity) is the ostensible upside to easy public availability of information on the shooter–to help in the prevention of future acts. Here are some problems with that one:
What new things do you really expect to learn here? That they had mental health problems? That they were loners? Angry? What eureka moment awaits the public when they click on yet another link to mass shooter backstory? What new solutions is throwing all the shooter’s details up on a screen for the public to gawk at really going to lead to?
Hasn’t the “we can prevent future acts” ship already kind of sailed? And how to abide the hypocrisy of a significant percentage of Americans yammering “there’s nothing we can do”, and the coward’s siren call of these shootings being “the price of freedom”, then clicking on news about the shooter till their fingers fall off?
The devil’s bargain is that clicking on these stories ends up giving the mass shooter all the fame they could want. There’s really a cost benefit relationship to consider.
You want information on the shooter that actually helps prevent future acts? Then go to sources that don’t give these guys the infamy they want. Here, for example, is an oft-cited paper by the American Psychological Association, “Mass Shootings and the Media Contagion Effect”, an entire study on mass shooters. I’m sure there are others. All the information you could want for actually helping, parsed and processed by salaried experts.
I’m sorry, but a lurid fascination with these jackasses backstories, and blindly parroting freedom of the press concerns is not making a strong case.
Absolutely nothing. As posted above of course fair use is in play. The paywall’s a damper. (Not married to the notion either. There are probably other ways to put the brakes on how in our hyperfied media day-and-age, a suicidal criminal seeking infamy can get it in spades.) The paywall’s advantages: 1. it slows down the media-spread effect but stops short of a more 1st amendment-conflicting media blackout (though of course you could do that too); 2. the proceeds from the paywall, in market terms, offer a way of compensating for external costs that arise from media coverage of the shooter (through the increased probability the coverage creates incentive for another mass shooting, and its subsequent costs in loss of life and so on).
Mass shooter commits atrocity, US public sees this individual’s photo posted all over major media sites, 24-hr news cycles, name repeated ad-nauseum in the major press outlets, and his mother, his brother, his sister, his ex- are all interviewed by name-brand networks, just pondering over what could have caused the individual to do this, effectively airing whatever sick grievances he’s been harboring all this time, all his hopes for relevance and infamy filled over and over. Next mass shooter in the queue’s just sittin’ there and watching this, drool coming out the corner of his mouth…
It let’s me know who did not kill lots of people, for one. If I don’t know the killer’s name, how do I know that you didn’t do it? Or that guy over there?
The fact that you would ask “what purpose does knowing facts have”, as if it was a valid question, is troubling.
Then surely you can provide a cite showing that this is an over-riding concern of most of the people who commit these mass shootings, right? :dubious:
Why is what I might want to know any of your business? Are you prepared to justify why you want to know everything you want to know? Do you really think this is the type of society you want to live in? :rolleyes:
Aye, like the one where most of these shooters end up dead after they shoot some people. How many mass shooters left us notes where they described their brilliant plan to do something violent then die, then become famous? I know you’re working hard on backing up your assertion that post-death fame was the goal of so many of these mass shooters, and can’t wait to see all of your cites.
So now you’re the sole arbiter of what can and can’t be learned and known? :dubious::rolleyes:
“Lurid”? “Blindly parroting”? Your characterizations are totally out of line and at odds with the evidence.
In short, your ideas come across as reactionary and not driven by facts (or an actual identified problem). Thus far, you’ve not shown that your solution would effect any change at all in the current situation, nor that there is even any basis for thinking it would.
Oh for fuck sake, OPs suggestion is designed to be another weak “solution” to mass shootings.
The press should go the other way. FOIA the crime scene photos and videos and publish them. Let’s see if pics of 20 shredded five-year-olds has any effect on the debate.
Snowboarder Bo: I’m sorry, but your posts are kind of a mess. You seem angry (not judging). Read the whole thread (it’s not very long), and get back to me if you still have concerns, gripes, and so forth.
A trend in news media that downplayed attention to the killers is a fine idea; I encourage the news media to move in that direction (back in the 1970s, Dean Ing wrote stories about using this approach to discourage terrorism Very Proper Charlies). However, a governmental diktat requiring this approach is very likely to backfire - as the fact that we know the name of the idiot who burned down a temple 2000 years ago to get attention, even though the government of his time attempted to erase his name from history Herostratus - Wikipedia
I’m sympathetic to the idea that someone might be motivated to kill people partially for the fame and publicity such an act would garner. It would be a great thing if you could persuade MSNBC / CNN / NYT / WaPo to not provide them this desired publicity. I’m not sympathetic to the idea of using pressure from some branch(es) of the federal government to achieve that desired endstate. Do you understand why that’s an important distinction to me?
In this case, or in general? In this case, yes, I can understand that, because people vary widely on what action is warranted in response to a mass shooting. But the press is not sacred. The content it produces is still subject to cost-benefit analysis. If it truly produces something significantly more harmful than helpful for the public, it’s very much subject to correction by any of the usual mechanisms of government. Briefly researching, this usually seems to fall to the courts. Someone, say, files suit against someone distributing pornography, and the court rules it is not protected by free speech.
